Private Internet Access Next Generation Network comes out of beta

Posted on Jun 18, 2020 by Chris Miller
NextGen Network

Private Internet Access users will soon be able to access our Next Generation network of hardened VPN servers – which will be exiting a recently announced beta. These new VPN servers have been designed from the ground up to offer better security and performance so that our VPN network can meet and exceed the growing demand for our quality services. The use of our Next Generation VPN servers will allow Private Internet Access to work on much anticipated features such as making our VPN servers verifiably zero-access as part of our don’t trust, verify plan. These new servers have been designed with the most recent tried and true technologies to be optimized to provide the most secure and performant VPN service.

Private Internet Access releases Next Generation VPN servers with security and speed improvements

With our next generation VPN servers, our developers have redesigned everything from the hardware components to the deployment and update defaults to provide a better VPN server for our customers. All of these servers only use the latest packages in both kernel and userspace, which means that the software will always be up to date against the latest security flaws. When it comes to deployment, Private Internet Access installs an encrypted operating system instead of letting our datacenter partner install the OS. On the running VPN server itself, all VPN services and other system critical meta-services are deployed to memory using RAMDisks – this means that all sensitive information is lost if the server loses power in case it is seized. Besides being confined to memory, all the aforementioned services are also as isolated as possible. Additionally, SSH connections to and from our servers have Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) protection.

Inside the VPN servers itself, Private Internet Access is moving from using 1G network cards to 10G network cards. With the release of new VPN protocols and the increase in internet speeds around the world, Private Internet Access has committed itself to upgrading this key VPN server component in order to provide more reliable and faster speeds for our VPN users.

The Next Generation of Private Internet Access is here

Private Internet Access’s infrastructure team is very proud to be releasing these new servers for public use. With this new server infrastructure as its base, Private Internet Access will be able to streamline the development and deployment of new features. As always, Private Internet Access is committed to the privacy and security of its customers, and the new Next Gen VPN Network will allow us to take that commitment to the next level. This week, mobile users will be able to connect to Next Gen VPN servers by toggling the Next Generation preview option in their app settings. Any and all feedback is appreciated as we roll out these new VPN servers.

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4 Comments

  1. Kandi Klover

    Why just the VPN and certain other services? I remember reading before that PIA servers booted up entirely in RAM disk so that nothing at all would ever be recovered when a server was seized.

    4 years ago
  2. David Shanahan

    Releasing an ARM version soon?

    4 years ago
  3. JB

    Are the server USB ports blocked? If they aren´t it would be possible to plugin a device to capture RAM memory without the need to power it down.

    4 years ago
    1. Caleb Chen

      Great question! All ports are blocked so no access is available.

      4 years ago